Tasmania, and how Amber and I met

Four years ago I was happily unaware that people actually lived in Tasmania. Then one day I was talking to someone online...

Me: So where are you from?
Him: Tasmania
Me: LOL! No really, where are you from?
Him: ...Tasmania?

I quickly ran downstairs to tell my friends the news.

Embarrassingly, google told me that people actually do live on Stewart Island. After this I started googling Tasmania, and I fell in love with it. It looks so pretty, and even though I had never been very interested in going to Australia, I decided that I wanted to go to Tassie. I made some friends with Tasmanians, and at the end of 2010 I went over there for a holiday. Amber was one of the awesome people who came to the airport to pick me up, and the chaos started straight away.

Because a few people were there to get me, they had taken two cars. But the parking at the airport cost $2, and Phill/Brodey decided that they didn't want to pay for parking, so we decided to make Amber pay for parking and just drive really close behind her as she went out the boom gate so that we could get out without paying. Much to my surprise, it actually worked!

We were driving along the highway into town when all of a sudden...

A cop pulled Amber over. We drove off, like the good friends we are. We could just imagine what was happening?

But really it was just something to do with her rego, I can't remember. And she didn't tell him about the boom gate.
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For any people who aren't from Australia/New Zealand: The two countries have a friendly rivalry, which is mainly due to the fact that Australians are jealous of how awesome New Zealand is. The two weeks I was there pretty much consisted of people calling me a sheep shagger, and making fun of my accent.

They also thought it would be hilarious to try to trick me.

 I'd had enough

Yeah, there are actually monkeys in the park...
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I went on a road trip with Laura, Shaun and Jez to the zoo and to go fishing.
While I was at the zoo I fell in love with an Eastern Quoll (aka the cutest animal ever).

It was right up at the bars of the cage, so I stuck my finger in to pat it... And it grabbed onto my finnger, ripping a small chunk of skin off. I was too embarrassed to go and tell the zoo keepers that I'd stuck my finger in the cage and ask for a bandaid, so I just wiped it off on the grass and hoped that I wouldn't die. (I didn't, in case you were wondering)

After the zoo we went fishing, where Jez and I made a deal that whoever caught the first fish out of the two of us would get to slap the other one with it. This seemed like a win win situation for me, as if I won I got to slap Jez with a fish, and if I lost Jez is scared of fish and would have been a little girl about picking it up to slap me with it, which would have been hilarious. Unfortunately, neither of us caught a fish, but Shaun caught five or six and Laura caught one.

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Jez is learning to be a tattoo artist, and boredom and tattoo guns are bad combinations. He said that I could give him one, and I suggested my initials in a heart as a joke.

He agreed.

He did half, to show me what to do, and I did the other half. See if you can guess which half I did.

As you can see, my tattoing skills are as good as my blog drawing skills.
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A group of us went up to Tomahawk to stay for a couple of nights. (This is when Amber nearly killed me)
I really really wanted to go swimming.
My friends didn't.

 They forgot that I am a marine biologist...

I finally convinced Amber to come swimming with me.

While the boys stayed on the beach like scared little girls.

We were having fun in the water, until we saw a shadow, convinced ourselves it was a shark, and ran back onto the beach screaming.

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I moved to Tassie nearly three months ago. There hasn't really been any epic adventures yet, but I'm sure there will be many to come. Unless you want me to write a blog about how Amber punches kittens?